Today was the first day of classes,

which signifies that summer is officially over. It's also monday, so new goal day! Originally I had something else planned for this week's goal, but my emotions have been 100% everywhere over the past few days, so goal 25: Focus on Happy. Also, don't lose sight of the progress I've been making these past weeks, as far as cleaning my room and staying organized. Remember my goals. Just because classes started again, it doesn't mean I should lose sight of what I've been working toward.

Goal 1, Day 1

Happiness is…

1) Girl Scout cookies.

2) A phone call from a friend I haven’t talked to in months.

3) The little texts I get from Kyle throughout the day. Every one of them makes me smile (:

4) Hot tea or fizzy powder lattes later at night…

Make the choice, be happy.

On a regular basis we should strive to do more than just exist.  If all we do day after day is mindlessly just walk around, there's no point to us being alive except to create the next generation of people who will....what? Do the same thing?  What's the point of continuing the human species if all we do is work and make money and have kids and die?

I want to make a weekly goal that I plan on sticking to (and blogging about so you can see that I actually did it), and I'm not going to lie, it'd be pretty awesome if some of the people who read this did the goal, too.  The point of this is to actually live, not just exist.  And, hopefully, week by week I'll learn more about what living feels like. So,

Week 1, Goal 1: Be happy.

It's pretty simple, 2 words, a verb and a noun, and it makes a lot of sense.  Quite simply, being sad or angry sucks.  Yet we allow ourselves to fall off the happiness path on a pretty regular basis (from the people I see, anyway).  Being happy is feeling something, something different from the norm, something that triggers other emotions, and laughter, and creativity and 100 other things.  Being happy changes who we are in that moment.  It's pretty awesome, actually.

On a regular basis I'm not necessarily sad, but I'm not happy, either.  I'm existing.  If you tell me to do something (wash your dishes, go buy some bread), I'll probably do it [unless it's something seriously stupid].  I might do it in the most half-hearted way you've ever seen, but it'll get done, and that's that.  Most of my day in this hazy "existence" stage is spent via hours on the computer or watching tv, and eating food.  When I "exist" I eat like I've forgotten the last time I've eaten.   And that's kind of true.  When I'm just going through the paces in my zombie-mode I don't remember much of what I've been doing, so ah, wth, I'll eat a couple more cookies, finish off the bag of chips, go back later for a sandwich and a few spoon-fulls of peanut butter.  The thing of it is, when I wake up from my crazy trance days or weeks later, I look back and go "geez, what did I even accomplish during that time?" The answer is generally "er...I did the dishes a few times.  AND I WROTE AN ESSAY. (in 2 hours. That was kinda just thrown together. That I should have been working on all week seeing as it's worth a quarter of my grade...)."  It's not exactly impressive.  Actually, no, worse than that.  It's pretty pathetic.

Which brings me to this weeks goal: happiness.  If I can find happiness on a day-to-day basis, hopefully it'll help keep me afloat in the real world, where I can keep feeling more than alive.  Broken down,  I plan on finding the little things during the day that bring me the most joy.  On a daily basis, I'm sure there's at least a few little things that bring me some level of happiness, I've just failed to notice them any time in the past I-don't-know-how-many years.  This week I intend to uncover those things and, ultimately, make the choice to be happy.